


Pity those kids, heavens above

by Hazazel



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Mello, Trans Male Character, Trans Near, all of the hurt and none of the comfort, very very light hints of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 18:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17730023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazazel/pseuds/Hazazel
Summary: The supervisors prepare for their night shifts, and often they think, “What a prison. Pity those kids, heavens above.”A one shot on life at Wammy's house.





	Pity those kids, heavens above

**Author's Note:**

> Don't @me on my Matt headcanons.

**00:00**

The lights go out. Mello sighs – fucking finally – and they sneak out their room after waiting a few seconds for the dean to finish her tour of the corridors. They walk on tiptoe to the library, which is never locked, and beeline straight for the back shelf. That’s where the most comfortable cushion is. They take a book out at random and sit there, reading. With a yawn, they rub their eyes. They’re gonna be here for a while.

 

**01:23**

Matt is sleeping soundly, they know because they saw him holed up in the covers when they entered his room. Mello sighs, and drops their book on the shelf where they found it. They haven’t been able to focus on it, it’s a really boring account of French peasantry during the Napoleonic wars.

Mello knows they should sleep.

They skirt along the stairs, idly drumming their fingers on the banister, until they reach the main hall and its wooden floor. They have to be careful there – the stairs are made of stone and do not creak, also, they’ve never been known to be discreet.

A light shines from under a door and Mello stops short. They have an internal debate, some sort of “but what if I can go unnoticed, do I really need to sleep” before a yawn threatens to have them discovered.

They go back to their room, kicking every item of clothing they forgot on the floor when they get there, and flinging themself on the bed. Another night, maybe.

 

**02:45**

The alarm clock rings once before he shuts it off. Near peeps through the keyhole, sees no one is around and sets to work. Privilege of being the teacher’s pet is he gets an unlimited supply of pen and paper, and easy access to a computer. Which means he gets a lot of writing to do. There are so many things to learn about and he just blindly copies it all down before his time is up – news broadcasts and sales prices and (maybe) (if he dares) queer studies articles, that the library cruelly lacks of.

He gets about an hour of work before the pressing around his chest gets suffocating, and he takes his binder off before he chokes to death.

“You don’t even have breasts yet, is this necessary ?” Roger asked. Yes it is, Near said, and ordered the thing of the internet anyway.

Time to sleep again, it seems.

 

**03:06**

Helen Rochester is a simple woman. The position of dean at an orphanage seemed good, so she took it, the pay is nice, so she stays.

But goodness, those children give her the creeps. Wide eyes, wide awake in the dead of night, gaping stares during the day and – she swears – they look like demons caught in the beam of her lamptorch.

This one is a girl of barely five, and she doesn’t say anything when Helen takes her back to her room and tucks her in. She has large purple bags under her eyes and clutches her plush carrot like it holds all the answers to… whatever questions these children are asked.

“You understand,” her employer said, “these children are very special. This is a form of non-disclosure that says you can’t-” She’d zoned out after this, and had a bit of a fright when she actually read her copy of the contract later on.

She has to remember. The pay is nice, so she stays.

 

**04:52**

Sunrise, lo and behold ! Matt thinks about it every single day. Sometimes he’s deathly afraid there won’t be any when he wakes, even though he triple checked sunrise hour and set his alarm just two minutes too late so he’d be sure to already see some rays.

That time when it was really cloudy and he ran into Mello’s room crying is not to be spoken of.

It’s nice to have certainty, like meal at fixed hours and brushing your teeth with the same bland toothpaste and never having holes in your socks. It’s nice to have stuff to do, like assignments and learning code and HTML programming. Sometimes though, Matt needs a little mayhem. Like scratching the paint on the dining room benches or… all right, admittedly, he’s been laying back on the mischief.

But he’s been tired. Oh, so, very, tired. Mello doesn’t understand, fueled by spite and rage, and they always say “You should sleep more, you should eat this, you should, you should”. Matt thinks he should leave but he never says so because leaving Wammy would mean leaving Mello and even he understands that this is another topic never to be spoken of.

 

**05:30**

Near wakes up in cold sweat, ribs aching slightly, cheeks wet. He doesn’t remember his nightmare and doesn’t try to grasp at the last images fading away from his mind, he just lies back in his bed and tries to forget he exists for a moment.

It works, more or less.

 

**06:05**

It’s been five minutes since the alarm clock rang but Mello still refuses to open their eyes. Who the fuck makes kids wake up so early anyway ? It’s not like Roger doesn’t know they all barely sleep, so why not, just a thought, just maybe, let them sleep in a little ?

They squint at the ceiling when someone quietly enters the room. It’s Matt, of course it’s Matt, they don’t even have to look.

“Hi Mels,” he says, and Mello answers, “Hi Matt.”

“Do you know what’s for breakfast ?” Matt says, and Mello answers, “Fuck if I care.”

A well-honed routine, made to sustain them until Mello has dressed and they blearily make their way down the corridor for the breakfast at 7am.

 

**07:27**

Breakfast is served on aluminum platters but Linda likes to pretend they’re silver. She paints a quick portrait in the egg yolks, erased in one well-timed fork jab, and she pretends she wasn’t just daydreaming a second ago when one of the teachers tells her she should hurry up and finish eating before class starts.

She’s a damn kid, and “hurrying up” is a peanut concept.

 

**08:15**

Class starts and Jay isn’t sure she wants to listen today. It’s ok, she has Holt to catch up with, but… Sometimes she feels like not catching up either. This is history and it’s pretty damn boring. It should be renamed “geopolitics” and left to rot with the horror that is algebra. She thinks that, as a 12 year old girl, she’s got better things to do than learn about all the ways in which the world is fucked-up, and also trigonometry.

“Today’s topic will be-” she yawns and stops listening. Oh well.

 

**09:45**

Recess ! Damn finally, Matt thinks, because it never comes early enough. Football !

 

**10:56**

Ugh, geometry. Linda doesn’t like it. Who cares about abstract triangles ? She can’t wait for lunch.

 

**11:40**

Lunch, as always, is served at twenty to twelve, ten minutes after classes end. The cook makes sure they eat enough of everything, and anyway, most of these kids need a special diet, so they have tables separated by dislikes and allergies. Go make a twelve year old eat vegetables, I tell you. Holt doesn’t think he should have anything to do with bell pepper yet here we are, in front of what the cook announced as “Provencal semolina salad”, which according to his baba is what couscous looks like in a white person’s house.

Jay is late for lunch, and she comes in five minutes later, sits quietly next to him, her arm hidden under her sweater. We’re in the middle of summer and the temperature is absolutely out of bounds for a June in Wales.

At least Holt assumes they’re in Wales. That’s what his parents were told he was going.

He ends up giving most of his salad to Jay and eating only dessert, but it’s better than nothing. She needs to eat more than him, anyway.

 

**12:22**

Matt is hidden behind a wall and he knows that if people just looked, they’d find him. But the only one who would is Mello and they’re busy playing with the other kids. Matt has much more interesting things to do.

This phone barely has battery left, so Matt will soon put it back where he found it, but for now he’s texting Cátia. She is from Portugal and she’s nice and he met her on this forum he found when he typed “I feel more robot than human”. He hopes the supervisor he stole the phone from won’t mind his very, very high phone bill too much, because Cátia is really nice and he wants to talk to her more.

 _> >ur nice haha_, he sends.

_< <Well it’s not often you meet other robotkin!!!!!!_

_< <Where do you say you lived again??_

He hesitates, and types in, _> >england, y?_

_< <I’ve always wanted to visit London!!!_

_> >ive never been there_

_< <We’ll have to go together one day!!!!!_, she sends, and Matt’s heart clenches.

 _> >yea_, he answers. _> >we should_

 

**13:57**

Only three minutes till the bell rings and Matt barely appeared from the Forbidden Corridor, as Dana dubs it, which is just where the supervisors live. Today is their presentation on “Methods of investigation”, one of the most interesting things of the curriculum, and she doesn’t want a bad grade.

Goodness, she doesn’t want a bad grade.

Matt did a half-assed work at the library but revealed himself to be a mine of information on computer data mining. She read up on profiling and detective work. They should be ok, right ?

“Hey Dana,” Matt hollers from Mello’s side. They eye her with barely disguised disinterest, and turn away while Matt walks closer.

“Ready for the big day ?” he says, smiling, and she nervously answers, “We worked hard on this. We can do it.”

“Yeah, right !”

She repeats it to herself, softly. We can do it.

 

**14:45**

The bell rings, thank God. If they have to listen to one more word about Methods of investigation, Mello is going to scream and kick someone in the teeth. For real – they’ve done it before and they’re not above doing it again. It’s just so fucking boring, ok ? Collaborate with the police, Interpol, governments, work with civilians and all that jazz. That’s not how it really works in their fourteen-year-old mind, and they’re burning with the desire to have _more_.

More experiences, more real life knowledge. Did their caretakers know where they were sending them to ? Sometimes Mello doesn’t think so. Fuck this orphanage, he wants to say. He doesn’t tell Matt – leaving him behind would hurt too much. They don’t have the courage to leave anyway… for now.

 

**15:30**

Recess. Near takes his puzzle from under the table and can now complete it without pretending that he’s doing any of the actual classwork. He’s done it already anyway. Everything is… just shy enough of challenging for him not to participate more than he absolutely has to. Oh sure, he puts in the work. Sure, he slaves countless hours in the library. But not as much as the others (as Mello), he thinks, because… He just doesn’t care that much.

Recess is over too soon but he’s completed the puzzle. One more hour to go.

 

**16:50**

Snack time is always complicated because, for one, it’s the only reminder that they’re kids. Half an hour every day, they’re children again, waiting in line for mint-flavoured water and bread and chocolate sticks. Some barter, some complain, and they all forget that they’ll soon be buried in homework.

Mello loves their extra chocolate like Matt loves that he can sneak on the computers, like Near loves being alone and disdainful.

It’s one of the loneliest moments of the day, if only because everyone is there and talking and pretending and pretending.

 

**17:00**

Near barely has the time to hole up in his favourite library seat before tiny first years storm by and rake the internet for the answers to all their woes. Wikipedia can’t solve loneliness but it sure has a backed-up notes section in which a lot of library books are referenced, and it’s as good a place to start research as any.

It doesn’t hurt that one of their assignments is to write those Wikipedia article themselves, but hey. Who cares.

Today he’s working on math, because he’s a little bit late on his assignment for next week and he should have been done yesterday already (but then he spied on Matt’s internet history and that was much more interesting).

And if he’s good, he’ll have time to finish his re-re-rereading of Asimov’s Foundation.

 

**18:30**

Meds before dinner. That’s all. Jay keeps her eyes down because she’s one of the only ones to still need those and it’s as shameful as cheating on a test, except cheating is encouraged. Holt squeezes her hand when she comes back from the nurse’s office and she at least feels a little bit better.

 

**19:48**

Matt is back in the library with one of his stolen phones, which gives Mello leisure to browse his secret stash of documents. He’s stolen them from Roger’s office, one day he was gone meeting up with – probably L. Mello hasn’t told anyone about it but they’re making a list, and they plan on giving Matt access to this eventually, but for now it’s their dirty little secret.

L’s secret data. It’s on cases as wild as the (thankfully averted) nuclear apocalypse of 1998. Why they don’t learn about this, Mello has no clue, but they think that if someone could teach them detective work it’d be L. He’s the best at it, right ? Supposedly, anyway.

 

**20:12**

Jay has gone to “sleep”, leaving Holt alone to work on their history assignment. She’s always hated this topic, and will do anything to avoid working on it. Suits him well – she can do their math assignments alone, she’s good at it.

Truth be told Holt is worried sick, but who could he go to ? The supervisors don’t care. The dean is useless. Roger despises them. The other children are just as helpless.

He completes the work on autopilot and daydreams of flying away.

 

**21:32**

She’s alone in her room but her ears are buzzing. Dana doesn’t think they did a bad job, so why is she like this ? Hyperventilating in her room, straight-up shaking while she replays over and over the look of pity Near shot her when she made that mistake during the presentation. She already doesn’t remember what it was – a wrong date maybe – but it doesn’t matter. She’s going to be expelled. They’ll discover she’s a fraud and she’s going to be expelled oh god what will she do ?

 

**22:45**

Little evening tea, anyone ? Matt says it cheerfully like someone will answer, but he’s been more or less alone in this corner of the library for a little while now. A girl some feet away raises her head and lowers it again with a shrug – “Lose your time partying if you want to, I got work to do”, she seems to say.

Matt will never get this competitive spirit they all have. He’s, thankfully, way above this. Sometimes he wants to tell Mello to leave it all, but he knows it’s no use.

 

**23:55**

The bell rings to signal the lights will go out in five minutes and most children reluctantly head to the bathroom to brush their teeth. Matt tosses his discharged phone in an unused classroom, Mello closes up his file, Near finally logs out of his secret roleplay account. Jay finally falls asleep, and Dana too, while Holt silently comes in his friend’s room and empties the trash before the maids can realise what’s in it.

The supervisors prepare for their night shifts, and often they think, “What a prison. Pity those kids, heavens above.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please please leave comments and kudos. They make my day !


End file.
